More Than a Message in a Bottle

Jenny Park

Hope

by Emily Dickinson

Reflection

Out of faith, hope, and love, I would always take hope to be my favourite virtue. I think this realization came to me when I first heard a homily by Fr. Robert Conway, the chaplain of the formerly known Ave Maria College. Sitting in the multi-purpose hall where both Mass and dances could be held, I heard Fr. Conway telling us that by changing water into wine at the wedding of Cana, Jesus wanted all to experience hope. From then on, I equated hope with wine. This hope translated into belief that despite our troubles, we live in the Messianic Era and we have Jesus, Emmanuel.

Sometimes, hope can be clouded by a good number of things. It is at this point when I realize that hope is more than just a feel-good moment that passes by. While hope does make us feel good, like wine, it is something much more substantial. If it were simply an emotion, then it would surely be subject to the change of time. Emotions should change, but hope is something to be grasped as a constant fixture in our lives. Hope does seem frail, like a bird, hence Emily Dickinson’s poem: “Hope is the thing with feathers/ That perches in the soul,/And sings the tune without the words,/And never stops at all.”
Thus, hope is both fragile and resilient, abiding somewhere deep from within. It is something that refuses to be destroyed and yet so buoyant, it can be carried aloft in one’s heart, like a song. Hope is indeed a precious gift from above.

Hope can mean different things to different people, but what defines hope for me is knowing that God is with me, hence we call out: “O Come, o come Emmanuel!” Despite the fear, the anger, the confusion of living in these times, we need hope that tomorrow will be a brighter day. While it is a good thing to live in the present moment, at times we need the strength of hope to continue a task at hand.

Sometimes, hope is more than having one’s expectations fulfilled, which is essentially my definition of luck. Hoping and wishing that a gambler would win the jackpot, suppose the gambler forfeits everything? Suppose he wins? I will be the first to admit that the year 2009, the year of the ox, was supposed to be my “lucky” year. My “hope” was that I would meet unencumbered success in all walks of life, yet frequently this year I found myself aimless, clueless, and hopeless. I often found myself in relationships with people who represented this fun-natured aspect of luck, but did not have the long-lasting solidity of hope.

Dickinson’s second stanza of hope reminds me of what makes me human: “And sweetest in the gale is heard;/ And sore must be the storm / That could abash the little bird/ That kept so many warm.” Hope is eventually that fire inside ourselves that keeps us warm when we are met with the disappointments and failures that are to come our way. It is what prevents us from growing a callous, jaded view of life. And yet, it is heard precisely when we are at our most jaded and disenfranchised selves; it is the call of hope that brings us back.

Emily continues in her third and last stanza: “I’ve heard it in the chilliest land/ And on the strangest sea;/ Yet, never, in extremity,/It asked a crumb of me.” This is another aspect of hope that I love: the abundance of hope that is found when Jesus turns water into wine, essentially our disbelief into belief. Hope is more than something that can be parcelled by logic alone. At times, I have tried to do so, trying to add up hope, finding evidence, rationalizing. Yet with hope, it does not ask for evidence, it is something that exists for those who wait after the storm has died down. Hope is something that is heard “on the strangest sea,” for often it is something that surpasses even our own understanding.

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